


The Rat and the Moon's Daughter

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Bad Poetry, Cake, Gen, Music, Tea, ro2sid exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 07:31:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: Basnaaid has reserved a table in a tea-garden and ordered three of every kind of cake. In gratitude, her twelve-year-old guests perform a duet. Basnaaid knows the lyrics only too well.





	The Rat and the Moon's Daughter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enemyofperfect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemyofperfect/gifts).



Basnaaid is never sure whether she has become a true, successful grownup citizen, or is just pretending as hard as she can. Usually the distinction seems invisible to others. At the moment, though, the line is a little blurrier, because Basnaaid is fulfilling a childhood dream: she has reserved a table in a tea-garden and ordered three of every kind of cake. Her partners in this endeavor, whom she has just met, are Kheselo and Saanang. Kheselo is the daughter of one of Basnaaid's oldest friends. She is about twelve, elongated in the way some children that age become, like pea-plants shooting tendrils toward a single light source. Saanang is Kheselo's best friend. She is also tall for her age, though Basnaaid suspects this is a temporary distinction, and Saanang has simply come early to her full adult height. Her movements are rapid but compact: she never reaches further than she needs to reach. At the moment she is systematically demolishing a cake covered in sesame seeds.

Kheselo has broken open a cake filled with red fruit paste, and is contemplating whether to eat the second half. She regards it seriously, sets it down, and draws herself up for her own attempt at serious grownup behavior: "Horticulturalist Basnaaid. Thank you so much for inviting us. And for all the cakes. Mama said it was fortunate, that on my first real journey away from home, I could meet one of her oldest friends."

"Please convey my regards to your parent," Basnaaid says, attempting to match Kheselo's gravity.

"Thank you, I will. We were hoping that after tea we could show you something we have prepared, as a thank you?"

"Of course!" Basnaaid prepares herself to make an appropriate display of gratitude. She's fairly certain, at least, that the narrow case Saanang has with her does not contain a plant. Basnaaid is particular about which plants she personally keeps.

Saanang finishes her cake, scattering the last few sesame seeds, and opens the case. It contains a long wooden whistle, stained a golden brown. Basnaaid remembers similar instruments from her own childhood, though she suspects Saanang's is less high-pitched. Given the care with which Saanang holds the whistle, Basnaaid suspects that the child is also more skilled than she ever was.

Kheselo sets aside her plate and stands near the edge of the table, beside a potted dogwood tree. It seems this is to be a duet.

Saanang plays the opening notes. The melody is clear and simple. Basnaaid imagines the notes winding through the tea-garden, around the branches of the different ornamental trees.

Kheselo's voice is also clear. She sings along with Saanang in a nonsense refrain for a few bars, then launches into a ballad:

"Her face was smooth and round like a porcelain bowl,  
smooth and round like a moooon."

Basnaaid struggles to maintain a pleasant smile. She knows those lines: this is the beginning of her very own childhood epic, the story of the Daughter of the Scarlet Moon.

"Joyful, serene, she walked in the marketplace  
viewing all the ordinary citizens,  
the busily conversing mercatorial denizens."

Basnaaid had looked up "mercatorial" and "denizens" in a treasury of words for poets, when she was not quite ten, and felt tremendously learned. Indeed, viewed impartially, her epic isn't bad work, for a nine-year-old. If anything, it's precocious. But Basnaaid only has so much distance from her childhood self. She feels each lyrical flaw as her own personal fault, and cringes at each disarranged word and forced bit of rhythm.

The worst is yet to come, because in the song the Daughter of the Scarlet Moon has not yet met her destined friend and rival, the legendary thief known as the Rat. The Rat herself is not so objectionable. The problem is her dialogue, which young Basnaaid wrote in the fake dialect she associated with storybook pickpockets, filled with unnecessary contractions and _c_ s mysteriously converted to _ch_. No person has ever spoken that way. Did Basnaaid not understand that real citizens face real barriers because of the way they speak? Or did she write the Rat, all lightning speed and darting glances, because she _did_ know she was judged, and wanted to imagine her own eventual triumph? Basnaaid doesn't know. Her stomach twists in contemplation of either possibility.

"Rapidly a person sped across the Daughter's vision  
reflecting and deflecting every mirrored beam of light..."

Basnaaid cradles her teacup in her hands, hoping this looks like rapt attention. Saanang begins a solo whose piercingly high notes seem designed to evoke the beams of light.

"The miniature mammal watched the Daughter of the Moon.  
Equally and in impartial measure, the Moon's Daughter watched the Rat.  
Together they were matched and together they would triumph,  
from the highest to the lowest, still immortal friends eternal!"

Kheselo stretches out the last note, while Saanang reprises the squeaky rat-solo underneath. This is a definite, planned finale. Basnaaid sets her teacup down and applauds, smiling in amusement and relief. She shouldn't have expected them to perform her entire poem. It goes on for pages and pages. 

"I am astonished!" Basnaaid tells the children. "I understood from Kheselo's parent that you were both musically inclined, but I had no idea that you were composers."

"But we had to," Kheselo says, intent.

"It seemed as if it was meant," Saanang elaborates. "Kheselo being here, and the promises of eternal friendship. And your poem is really very good, for a nine-year-old."

"Thank you. We are both honored, my past self and my present one." Basnaaid means it, every word. She's glad, though, that at this time of day the tea-garden is mostly empty of other customers. Better to keep the memory of this unexpected performance for herself.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to flowersforgraves for canon-checking, and to my own eleven-year-old self for providing inspirational text, in the shape of the origin story of one Luna Moonchild.


End file.
